It is with great sadness that we announce that Martin Williams has sadly passed away.

Accountancy Age staff would like to extend their deepest sympathies to Martin's family his friends and his colleagues at Graydon.

Our story on Martin is here.

A PIECE in the money section of the FT on Saturday quoted a number of small business owners who described the Government's Prompt Payment Code as mere window dressing.

One even mentioned that one of the large companies signed up to the prompt payment scheme was one of their worst payers!

Of course, one of the big drawbacks of the scheme is that it is voluntary. Full marks to the ICM and the government for raising awareness of this serious issue......but will it ever make a difference? I very much doubt it. But then again, will government ever come to the rescue of SMEs who suffer tremendous cash flow difficulties because of the greed of the big corporates with muscle.

I think it's time for the government to act against large private organisations who find it difficult to forgo the obvious advantages of holding on to money that belongs to someone else i.e.smaller suppliers. Why should large organisations be able to unilaterally impose 90 days payment terms on suppliers when they demand their own invoices to be paid within 30?

How about this for an idea. government can appoint inspectors to do spot checks within the purchase departments of large organisations to check on the DPO (Days Purchases Outstanding).

If the figure looks particularly high, given that most business impose 30 days credit terms, a random check on some real invoices within the department can be undertaken.

Penalties could be imposed for any wrongdoing.

These things within a finance department would be very difficult to hide away from an inspector, so the spot checks should be very straightforward to achieve. Good idea or bad idea? I'd like to know your thoughts.

THE LACK of sales activity in Britain's stores seems to be having a negative impact on levels of production in UK factories, denting hopes of an economic recovery.

News from the latest Purchasing Managers Index out today records that the index has fallen sharply to 52.1 from April's figure of 54.4.

Forecasters were pessimistically looking for a figure of 54.2 in May, so the results were worse than anticipated. Consumer goods producers were particularly bleak with their outlooks, but no wonder given the obvious reticence of punters in our high streets to part with their money.

Over the last few weeks, we've seen countless retailers hatching survival plans that in many cases will involve a number of shop closures. HMV, Mothercare and JJB Sports are just a few examples, whilst other groups have fallen by the wayside. (Oddbins and Focus DIY are two that couldn't avoid administration).

Deloitte recently produced figures showing that retail insolvencies rose by 30% in quarter 1 of 2011.

I'm in no doubt that the financial trouble on Britain's high streets will actually get worse before it gets better. I can only hope too that the service industries and manufacturing sector can pick up in the short term to help keep UK GDP in positive territory.

MORE RESEARCH has come to my attention from BDRC Continental on behalf of BACS, saying that SMEs continue to suffer from slow-paying bigger clients - average wait time - 39 days beyond terms.

There's nothing particularly earth-shattering about this news, although the research does pick up a big improvement in how public bodies pay their bills, while 33% point the finger clearly at larger private limited companies for being the worst offenders.

Slow payments of trade debts is an age old problem for SMEs, but in a "dog eat dog" world, will bigger private organisations ever decide to forgo the obvious financial advantages of holding on to money that effectively isn't theirs ? I doubt it very much.

Legislation is in place that allows businesses to claim statutory interest on overdues, but SMEs are generally too frightened to use it in case they aggravate their customers.

No-one is going to change business culture overnight, but SMEs can help improve their cash flow situations by taking direct action themselves.

Firstly, SMEs must ensure they state their payment terms on credit application forms and invoices.

They should always ask a customer whether they will need to quote a purchase order on any invoice submitted. Before any due date, but after delivery of the goods or services being invoiced for, make sure the client is happy with what they received. This phone call will eliminate the possibility of the client using the stalling tactic of blaming non-payment of an invoice on a product/service quality issue.

There are hundreds of tips one can give to SMEs. Perhaps readers of this blog can add a few more to my short list

FOLLOWING SOME very gloomy assessments about the future of the retail sector, the Government has announced its intention to ask Mary Portas, TV 's so called Mary Queen of Shops, to investigate how Britain's high streets can be saved. Apparently shop vacancies in the high streets have doubled in three years.

My advice to Mr Clegg and his colleagues at BIS who have appointed the TV personality is very straightforward. If you really want to do something about protecting high streets from extinction, window dressing won't do it for you! Instead, why not direct your energy towards supporting your parliamentary colleagues Ed Davey and Andrew George and push hard to introduce legislation to appoint a grocery adjudicator as soon as possible.

This "Ombudsman" type person was recommended by the Competition Commission back in 2008 when looking into the excessive power of major supermarket chains, and how their purchasing power is used to drive supplier prices down, and fend off possible competition from smaller retailers.

News from Parliament is that a draft bill may now only be debated in 2012, which means that an adjudicator may not be seen until 2013/2014 - a full six years after the Competition Commission report was published. Call me a bit of a cynic, but maybe the supermarket chains' power extends way beyond price negotiating tables shared with grocery suppliers; I would imagine that they've got some pretty good lobbyists operating in the Westminster area too!!

THE EU parliament's 2010 proposal to exempt micro businesses with under €1m (£880,000) turnover from filing accounts at official registries is still being contested, it seems, at EU Council level.

Only when the Council, under Hungarian Presidency since January this year, ratifies the directive by gaining 255 Council votes out of a possible 345, can member state governments start to implement law changes in their own territories.

According to my European sources, there is a sizeable blocking group at the present time headed by France, Italy and Belgium, meaning that the main proponents (Germany and the UK) are well short of their 255 target.

In order to achieve consensus, apparently, a watered down version of the directive (only companies with less than €500,000 turnover would be exempt from statutory filing), is being discussed at council level but a positive outcome is still awaited.

I'm not surprised at all that Germany is leading the charge for less financial transparency in Europe. For many years, the German authorities penalised GmbH companies that flouted statutory filing law by such paltry sums that very few balance sheets ever existed at official registries.

The Germans seem to be returning to their long held conservative position of "keep companies' financial positions well under wraps" . As for the British Government's position - well, it simply baffles me!

For many decades, the UK prided itself on having one the best companies registries in the world, containing a wealth of financial and other statutory information that helped facilitate trade between buyers and sellers on open credit terms.

Now, UK ministers seem happy to push for a degraded registry unworthy of its name and tradition. And all because they think non-filing of accounts will save micro businesses time and money; thinking that in my opinion is totally flawed.

I take some comfort from knowing that there are politicians in other parts of Europe who seem to be agreeing with me!

AT AN Institute of Credit Management think tank meeting this week, it was clear that members representing insolvency practitioners, credit insurers and grass roots credit management are still scratching their heads over the relatively low insolvency numbers.

Historically, when the UK has pulled itself out of a recession, insolvencies have tended to rise.

During this particular credit crisis, insolvency stats were surprisingly suppressed, and in its aftermath, figures have continued to fall.

The mood among credit industry professionals seems to be one of cautious pessimism. Many still think that the number of business casualties will increase at some point, but I'm not too sure about this.

Due to a number of contributing factors, such as low interest rates, HMRC's Time to Pay scheme, and worries about the economy holding back many businesses' expansion plans, thus reducing the risk of over trading, maybe insolvency stats will remain muted.

If my last point is true, it may be good from a narrow insolvency stats perspective, but it won't do much to help drive an economic recovery of any note.

WELL, its taken a fair bit of time, but hooray, crime fighting bodies in the UK seem to have finally woken up to the growing threat of fraud which now costs this country a staggering £38bn a year!

Despite the scale of this menace, police and other authorities showed very little interest in tackling this particular type of crime in recent years; up until recently that is. Whilst it would still be true to say that the police are still not interested in investigating completed frauds, moves are certainly being made to ramp up activities on prevention.

At a Fraud forum organised by Graydon in April, a police inspector from the recently established National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, told delegates that information gathering was key to fighting and preventing fraud in the future. Many organisations were being encouraged to sign up to delivering fraud data into the centralised computer at the NFIB, including big banks and the non profit making CIFAS. Once there, data can be more easily analysed by the police to identify "hot spots" (addresses commonly used by fraudsters), and connections between individuals and gangs.

On the 5th May, the Daily Telegraph reported that the charity Crimestoppers has also turned its attention to fraud for the first time in its 23-year history. Apparently, only 5% of the 80,000 crimes reported to Crimestoppers relate to fraud, but since the organisation added a fraud section on its website, traffic has actually doubled.

For far too long, criminals have been attracted to fraud because the risks of being caught have been perceived as lower than many other crimes. Maybe, the heightened profile of all this enthusiastic fraud prevention and data sharing will serve as a greater deterrent. Even if conviction rates don't rise sharply as a result, fraudsters might find it more difficult to perpetrate their crimes against a better informed and more wary population.